Outlook XP & Exchange 5.5 - Poor Performance

[Charlie Hill]

I am using Office XP pro on my laptop. Outlook XP is configured to access an
exchange server 5.5 via a WAN link. Several times an hour it will appear
that Outlook will freeze while accessing e-mail (with or without
attachments). Moving from one exchange folder is another exchange folder may
take up 50 seconds. Often times Outlook will display a pop=up that there is a
delay sending/receiving e-mail.

The WAN is Private Network (PRN) provided by QWest. My site's VPN connection
into the prn is rated at 512, while the Exchange server's site VPN into the
prn is T1 (1.5 mb). Pinging the exchange server, while Outlook is frozen,
shows a response time of less then 100 ms.

While outlook is frozen, I use a terminal server to check the connection.
Outlook 2000 is loaded on the terminal server. It does not have a problem
accessing e-mail or exchange folders. This indicates to me that the Outlook
XP on my laptop maybe the source of the problem.

I would appreciate any tips on improving Outlook XP’s performance.

 

[Pat Cai[MSFT]]

Hi,

Usually, based on our experience, if you are using Outlook to connect to
Exchange Server via RPC/MAPI protocol over a VPN connection, the
performance of Outlook will be slower than for LAN users. This is because
that RPC protocol requires high network bandwidth, which is primarily
designed to be used in a LAN environment. That's also the reason why in
Exchange 2003 server we recommend using RPC over HTTP connection of
external users instead of VPN.

However, you may want to take a look at the following article to see if it
could enhance the Outlook performance via VPN connection for you.

246273 XCLN: Poor Performance Starting Outlook over PPTP Connection
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=246273

Also, I'd like to provide you the following suggestions as a workaround for
your remote Exchange users:

1. Use OWA and POP/SMTP instead of MAPI account for your remote users.

2. Enable offline file in Outlook to cache the data of mailbox locally if
you still prefer using Outlook via MAPI protocol. To do so, please refer to:

290857 How to use offline folders (.ost) file in Outlook 2002
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=290857

Hope the information helps.

Regards,

Pat Cai
Microsoft Online Partner Support

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